


This Motor That You Call My Heart

by Kian



Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Elementary School, Alternate Universe - Military, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asthma, Body Horror, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Bucky Believes He's A Robot, Childhood Friends, F/M, Foster Care, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Steve Rogers, Kid Logic, M/M, Multi, Old Friends, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Prosthesis, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Sarah Rogers is a BAMF, Steve Rogers Is a Good Bro, Time Jump, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-12
Updated: 2015-07-22
Packaged: 2018-03-12 00:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,805
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3337856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kian/pseuds/Kian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I know this transition is hard right now,” says the new caretaker, designation ‘Missus Meyers,’ “but we all need to try and make the best of it, put our best foot forward.”</p><p>BUCK-E was unsure of the point of pretending to be human when it was actually a robot, but if that was the mission they wanted the robot boy to run, then it would do its best to adapt to a human life.</p><p>The second day of human school, BUCK-E met Steve Rogers.</p><p>Twenty years later, James Barnes met Captain America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm Not A Human If You Say I'm Not

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song “Self Machine” by I Blame Coco. Somewhere between listening to that song and “Me The Machine” by Imogen Heap, this little plot bunny emerged. And then grew. As a disclaimer, I know very little about the inner complexities of the foster system, I have only second-hand knowledge of asthma attacks, and I have the bare minimum of programming knowledge that learning DOS as a kid gave me. Because I was writing all of these things from a child’s perspective, I figured the blurriness or inaccuracy was relatively okay.
> 
> As ever, I don't have a beta, so if you see anything appalling, please report it to the front desk. Enjoy!

BUCK-E spent most of its first day of human school in the Principal’s office with Mister Phillips, while its new caretaker — “foster mom, Bucky” — talked to its teachers about the difficulties of integrating a robot boy in with the rest of the class.

On the drive back to mission control — “home, Bucky” — after collecting girl-robot, designation BECC-A — “I don’ wanna be a stupid robot!” — its new caretaker — “Missus Meyers, Bucky” — explained that the human caretakers expected it to blend in with the other humans at school, so BUCK-E needed to communicate in more than the standard _beeps_ , _dings_ , and _whrrrs_ of robotkind.

“I know this transition is hard right now,” says the new caretaker, designation ‘Missus Meyers,’ “but we all need to try and make the best of it, put our best foot forward.”

BUCK-E was unsure of the point of pretending to be human when it was actually a robot, but if that was the mission they wanted the robot boy to run, then it would do its best to adapt to a human life.

The second day of human school, BUCK-E met Steve Rogers. 

 

* * *

 

“Can I sit with you?” says a tiny human boy, a tin lunchbox gripped in one hand while the other brushes his yellow hair out of his eyes.

The lunchbox has Superman on it, red and blue with a bright white grin, surrounded by gold stars around the edges. The BUCK-E unit was given a white paper bag. The caretaker has drawn an approximation of a human smiling face on the side in black marker, along with the unit’s human code name.

BUCK-E tilts its — _his_ ; remember the mission — head and tries to think of human words for this situation.

“Yes,” he says, just as the hopeful look begins to fade on the human boy’s face. He stiffly jerks his head in a broad up and down movement to confirm.

The human boy grins and tumbles onto the bench opposite BUCK-E at the long table. By contrast, the tin lunch box is set on the tabletop gently, and the human boy opens it with deliberate care. Out comes a Superman thermos, a turkey sandwich cut into four neat quarters, a small red apple, a baggie of cheese slices, and a single Hershey’s Kiss candy, which the human boy sets further into the middle of the table between them, where it cannot be knocked onto the floor by an elbow and lost. The human boy arrays his lunch neatly and unscrews the stopper of his thermos, pouring a bit of apple juice from it into the cup that doubled as its top.

BUCK-E watches the whole proceeding with interest. He looks down at his own meal, and rearranges the assortment of sandwich, chips, grapes, and juice box to more closely resemble the display opposite him. He uncrumples the paper bag his meal was provided in and sets it aside in mimicry of the tin lunch box, though he leaves the “smiley face” artwork side of the bag face down.

The human boy takes a noisy slurp of apple juice, holding the Thermos’ cup between his two hands. BUCK-E picks his juice box up between two hands as well, but he miscalculates the grip for his robot hands and a stream of juice shoots up from the perforated lid, the tiny plastic straw flying a few feet to land on the floor behind him. The human boy’s eyes shoot wide in surprise, while BUCK-E lets go of the juice box abruptly, and it lands back on the table in an upright position with a dull _plop_.

There’s juice on the table, a few sprinkles having fallen across their lunches, but most of the liquid ended up on BUCK-E’s hands and the sleeves of his shirt. The human boy stares at him for a moment, and BUCK-E feels the defeat of another failed attempt at human behavior. The human boy will surely leave now?

Instead, the corners of the human boy’s mouth tug outward and his eyebrows raise and suddenly a bright peal of laughter breaks out of his tiny mouth.

“Oh, man. You should see your face!”

BUCK-E looks down at his ruined lunch, the mess he has made, and is unsure how to reply. He thinks very hard about getting away from the human boy entirely, but he finds that all his joints are on lockdown, possibly from exposure to all the juice on top of that entirely unnecessary _bath_ the evening before.

“Hey,” the human boy says, the laughter gone. A little hand touches BUCK-E’s wrist, uncaring of the juice drying there in a sticky trail. “Hey, I didn’t mean to make fun. Here, have some of my drink and I’ll go get some napkins.”

The human boy pushes his cup across the table, then spins himself around on the bench seat and sets off for the hot lunch line. BUCK-E watches him go, then looks down at the bright red cup. Cautiously — not wanting another mistake — he picks the cup up and brings it to his lips, just like the human boy had done, and takes a small sip of the apple juice. It is good. Better than the sickly sweet smell from the juice his caretaker had provided. He takes another sip, not so small this time. The urge to retreat and power down fades.

The human boy returns, a damp cloth in his hand. He smiles when BUCK-E notices.

“Missus Johnson said this’ll work better to clean up.”

The human boy kneels on the bench, and takes BUCK-E’s hands between his, carefully wiping each finger with the warm cloth. After, he wipes at the table and the little droplets on their plastic baggies and wrapped sandwiches, leaving only thin rainbow smears of rapidly drying water behind. The human boy then folds the cloth and sets it to one side. He smiles again at BUCK-E and pours some more apple juice into the cup before sitting down properly again.

“All better now,” the human boy says, sounding satisfied. That small hand stretches across the table and pushes the cup closer to BUCK-E. “We can share, since you spilled.”

“I’m BUCK-E,” he finds himself saying.

“Nice to meet you, Bucky,” the boy says, grinning wide, almost too big for his little face. “I’m Steve Rogers.”

“Hi, Steve,” BUCK-E says.

They spend the rest of their lunch period talking — well, mostly Steve talking and BUCK-E listening in fascinated wonder — and passing the Thermos cup back and forth. When they finish and the other children start to file out again, returning to their human classes, BUCK-E watches Steve pack the whole collection of lunch things, including the leftover baggies and plastic wrap, back into the lunch box. The very last is the little Hershey’s Kiss in the middle of the table, and Steve hesitates for a moment before pushing it towards BUCK-E.

“You can have my chocolate,” Steve says decisively.

“But, it’s yours,” BUCK-E argues.

“That’s okay. My mom has a whole bag at home. I’ll tell her I gave it away and I can have a new one later. You didn’t get a treat in your lunch today.”

“I don’t think my — “ BUCK-E stumbles over the correct human term. “My foster parents have a bag at home.”

“Oh,” Steve frowns for a moment. “Okay, I’ll ask my mom to give me two tomorrow. That way we can both have one.”

Steve ends the argument by trotting off to return the wet towel to the lunch ladies, so BUCK-E ends up taking the Kiss. The candy is sweet and satisfying, and so is Steve’s smile when BUCK-E waits for him at the cafeteria door. They head back to their classrooms together, Steve swinging his Superman lunch box happily and BUCK-E practicing a human smile that tastes like apple juice and chocolate.

Maybe, with people like Steve around, going to human school won’t be so bad. 

 

* * *

 

There are many good things about being friends with Steve, it turns out, but the best is that Steve doesn’t mind that BUCK-E is a robot.

When BUCK-E told Steve the truth at their third lunchtime together, Steve looked surprised, but hadn’t been mean like the teachers or the caretakers or the other children — even BECC-A — and told him he was pretending or making stuff up.

“Is it a secret?” Steve had asked. “Because you look like a boy?”

BUCK-E nods twice — he’s getting better at doing proper human things, he thinks — and hums an _uh-huh_ in the back of his throat.

And that’s that. 

 

* * *

 

Steve introduces BUCK-E to his band of playground friends, a small group of boys from some of the other classrooms and grades who live on Steve’s block and never tease him for being small or for having to use his inhaler sometimes in the middle of their games.

They like to play soldiers a lot, because Timmy — who everyone but the teachers calls “Dum Dum” because he tells the dumbest jokes anybody’s ever heard — has a dad in the Army. Steve is their Captain, Gabe says, because it means he can sit down when he needs to without stopping the game since captains get to tell everybody else what to do. When they ask BUCK-E what he wants to be, Steve says, “Bucky’s a robot. A really super one, that looks like a person, but he’s super strong and fast.”

“Like an android?” asks James as he twirls his favorite tennis racket-machine gun.

“Yeah,” Steve nods.

“Can he like, pick up a tank?” asks Dum Dum.

“No,” BUCK-E says.

“But he can blow one up with a punch!” Steve crows, pretending to throw a punch. “Boom!” he shouts, clapping his hands together to show the other boys what the explosion would be like.

“Awesome!” Gabe laughs, clapping a hand on BUCK-E’s shoulder. BUCK-E lets out a couple of _beeps_ and _whirrs_ , and the boys laugh enthusiastically. Dum Dum asks if he knows Morse Code, because then they’ll be able to communicate with him in robot-speak. When BUCK-E shakes his head, Dum Dum nods decisively and promises to bring a book he has so they can all learn together.

“That way, the bad guys won’t know what we’re saying!”

No one on the playground bothers him about being a robot again, and when BUCK-E catches Steve’s eye sometimes in the middle of the game, raiding the “bunker” and fighting off imaginary bad guys all over the playground, Steve grins so big BUCK-E can see where he lost his last tooth.

BUCK-E learns how to grin right on back. 

 

* * *

 

When BUCK-E stays at Steve’s house overnight for the first time, Steve pulls the sofa cushions off the couch and sets up a fort near the wall socket in the living room. It’s hard to see the TV, but it's the best place where BUCK-E can recharge while Steve sleeps.

BUCK-E thinks Steve may be the best person in the world. 

 

* * *

 

“It’s not really a disciplinary issue,” the school nurse, Missus Neubauer, explains.

BUCK-E shifts in his seat next to his foster mother, Missus Meyers, and stares hard at the tops of his shoes and the neat bows he’s learned to make of the laces. The meeting his teacher called for with his foster parents feels a bit like a trap. Miss Preston had had both Missus Neubauer and Mister Phillips, the Principal, waiting to meet them in the office after school. They had been passing around some of his schoolwork, tutting and pointing at his grades, his boxy handwriting, and his signature.

“But you’re concerned,” Missus Meyers sighs, rubbing a hand along her jaw while she glances over the papers.

“He’s socializing well; making friends and staying out of trouble,” Miss Preston offers. “He and little Steve Rogers are particularly good friends.”

“Yes, Bucky’s slept over a few weekends,” Missus Meyers agrees. “Sarah always reports that he’s been good while he’s visiting.”

“He is very well-behaved,” Miss Preston enthuses. “One of the best in our class.”

“We’re just concerned,” Missus Neubauer breaks in, “that Bucky still seems to be attached to this idea of being a robot. He sometimes seems to use it as an excuse for not making other friends, or as a way of dissociating from social anxieties. Do you have any idea of when it began?”

His foster mother sighs again, shaking her head.

“No, not exactly. He was already pretending when we agreed to foster, but his little sister, Becca, has mentioned it started after the loss of their parents.”

Missus Neubauer nods to herself, and Miss Preston just looks a little sad.

“Like I said, it’s not a disciplinary issue, but we would like to discuss how we might encourage Bucky to grow past this defense mechanism…”

BUCK-E stops listening, sinking further into his chair. Across the table, Mister Phillips is watching him, unspeaking, with his arms folded over his chest and a small frown pinching his features. BUCK-E’s eyes hurt and he wishes he could stop malfunctioning so much.

When the meeting is over and the ladies have all stood up and moved to the hallway, Mister Phillips stands and lays a warm, heavy hand on BUCK-E’s shoulder for a moment.

“Hang in there, young man,” he says.

BUCK-E nods twice and hurries to Missus Meyers when she calls for him. 

 

* * *

 

For the next two weeks, Missus Meyers checks the top of every bit of homework to make sure BUCK-E spells his name like a human boy. She makes him re-write his name every time he forgets.

But no matter how many times she tells BUCK-E to stop writing his letters as a robot, he doesn’t know how. 

 

* * *

 

He tells Steve about his letters, how he doesn’t know how to write so people can’t tell he’s a robot. Steve makes his thinking face and tells BUCK-E that they’ll come up with something.

The next time BUCK-E goes over to Steve’s house after school, Missus Rogers calls them to the dinner table and pulls out a pair of matching workbooks. Steve is better at the workbooks, but he doesn’t rush ahead. After doing five pages together, Missus Rogers gives them each a Hershey’s Kiss and a real one in the middle of their foreheads before she sends them off to play.

On the first spelling test Miss Preston hands back after BUCK-E learns cursive, there is a big smiley face sticker that says “Good Job!” When BUCK-E shows Steve, Steve grins and holds up his own test. They both get extra credit for something called “penmanship.” 

 

* * *

 

Steve draws a picture in Art class of a pen-man who flies a spaceship and speaks in beautiful cursive words of _beeps_ and _dings_ and _whirrs_. BUCK-E malfunctions and can’t stop laughing for five minutes, but he doesn’t mind because Steve joins in. They’re both sent into the hall for disrupting class.

When Mister Phillips walks by, he asks them what they’ve done and they show him the picture and tell him about the extra credit.

Mister Phillips confiscates the picture, but sends them back into class when they promise not to be disruptive anymore. BUCK-E stops just before going in and asks, quietly, “Are we in trouble, sir?”

Mister Phillips purses his lips for a minute, then says, “No, Mister Barnes. Back to class, and keep up the good work.” 

 

* * *

 

Missus Rogers puts on _Star Wars_ at the next sleepover (Steve and his mom have moved the TV so they can all see it better from the wall by the power socket), and Steve and BUCK-E talk in robot for the rest of the weekend.

Missus Meyers calls Missus Rogers in the middle of the week and asks her not to “encourage him.”

The next weekend, Missus Rogers gives them each a big bowl of popcorn and sits in the pillow fort with them to watch _The Empire Strikes Back_. 

 

* * *

 

Sometimes, Steve gets into arguments with older boys on the playground and they push each other around.

BUCK-E is stronger and faster and smarter than even the biggest of the playground bullies, and after the first few times, they all remember it.

Steve draws him a picture about how great it is to have a robot best friend. BUCK-E tapes it to the wall by his bunk in his and BECC-A’s room. He looks at it every night before he powers down to go to sleep. 

 

* * *

 

In April, Mister and Missus Meyers sit BUCK-E and BECC-A down to talk about how Mister Meyers’ work is moving him out of state.

Two days later, the social worker visits and talks to them about how they will move to a new place in the summer.

BECC-A runs to their room and slams the door, and Missus Meyers goes after her. BUCK-E can hear her crying from across the house and the way Missus Meyers croons to her to calm her down.

BUCK-E stays in his seat and sits very still. When the social worker asks him if he has any questions, he says, “Can I go live with Steve?” 

 

* * *

 

He can’t.

 

* * *

 

He stays at the dinner table while Mister Meyers talks to the social worker in the living room. He knows they’re talking about him, about how he’s a robot and how difficult that makes him.

He remembers, while they’re talking, how he’d found out he wasn’t human.

How Mister Pierce — the lawyer who had come when his parents first died — had watched him quietly while the first social worker had soothed BECC-A’s tears then, when they had told them they weren’t going to live in their house anymore. How Mister Pierce had looked at him from behind his glasses when the policeman had said, “He’s been like this this whole time. Like a little robot.”

And Mister Pierce had said, “Yes. Exactly like a robot, isn’t it?” 

 

* * *

 

They finish the school year, and there is a week before BUCK-E and BECC-A will move away.

He’s only told Steve, because he doesn’t want the other guys to be different. Dum Dum and Gabe and James wave goodbye on the last day of school, promising to see him again in the fall.

He goes home with Steve when Missus Meyers comes to pick up BECC-A.

“Have fun, sweetheart,” Missus Meyers says with a smile on her face. “Don’t worry about the move for right now.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh, Bucky,” she says, bending down for a moment and ruffling his hair fondly while Missus Rogers and Steve wait in their car. “You’re such a good boy.”

She hands him his duffle of overnight clothes and waves at Missus Rogers before she goes to collect BECC-A from her kindergarten graduation party.

 

* * *

 

BUCK-E and Steve spend the night watching their favorite robot movies and talking in robot.

When Missus Rogers comes to turn the light off and tuck them in, she kisses each of their foreheads and _whirrs_ very softly, “ _Beep boop_ ,” before she closes the door. 

 

* * *

 

BUCK-E and Steve spend most of the last week together, out of the way of the Meyers’ packing.

BUCK-E forgets all his human words, but it’s okay because Steve knows what all of his robot ones mean anyway. 

 

* * *

 

Two days before the move, BUCK-E and Steve are playing at the park across the street from Steve’s home while Missus Rogers works in the couple of flower beds in the little front yard.

They’re swinging on the monkey bars, Steve’s face a big bright smile as he makes BUCK-E laugh by making monkey noises.

And then Steve falls.

BUCK-E hears the gasp of air Steve takes when he lands on his arm, and the sudden choking wheeze. BUCK-E drops down beside him, turns Steve over.

Steve doesn’t scream or yell. He can’t.

His eyes are wide open in shock. Steve’s grabbing at the arm he landed on, his mouth wide open, but BUCK-E can hear the way the air isn’t getting in. There’s no one else in the playground of the park, and Missus Roger’s back is turned while she plants violets across the street.

BUCK-E’s mouth opens and closes, but only hoarse choking beeps come out.

Steve’s eyes are on him, and his face is going red as he tries to suck in air.

“...buck...y…” Steve wheezes out.

BUCK-E is just a robot. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s locked up. He doesn’t have any human words. He doesn’t…

Steve can’t breathe. Steve _can’t breathe_.

“HELP! HELP! MISSUS ROGERS! STEVE! HELP!”

Bucky is still screaming when Missus Rogers arrives, pulling Steve into her lap as one hand flies toward his mouth, his inhaler at the ready. She steadies him and gets him to take one big puff, two. Steve takes a big gasping breath and whines hard on the exhale.

“I know, baby. I know.”

Missus Rogers picks Steve up and carries him at a jog back across the street to where their car is parked at the curb, Bucky following.

“Bucky, run inside and on the front table are my keys. Bring them out and press the door unlock button,” she says. “Can you do that for me?”

“Yes ma’am,” Bucky cries, taking off for the open front door of the house at a run. He finds the keys and starts pressing the unlock button immediately, even before he gets back outside.

Missus Rogers has opened the car already by the time he gets back and stretches Steve out in the back seat.

“Bucky, give me the keys. I need you to get in the front seat and buckle up. Keep Steve company, and if he has trouble breathing again, give him another puff on his inhaler.”

Bucky crawls into the front seat and buckles, before turning all the way around to watch Steve.

Steve’s mom has draped the broken arm over Steve’s chest with the elbow braced against the back seat, so Bucky reaches for the un-hurt hand. Steve’s eyes open when Bucky takes his hand, and he squeezes back weakly before he goes back to thinking about breathing.

Missus Rogers closes all the doors and then get into the driver’s side, turning around to check on Steve one more time before she turns the car on and starts pulling out onto the street.

“Bucky, I need you to help Steve breathe, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Can you take big deep breaths so Steve can see you?”

And Bucky does, all the way to the hospital. 

 

* * *

 

Missus Meyers picks Bucky up from the hospital after they take Steve back to check on him and set his arm.

“He was very brave,” Missus Rogers says, before she goes back to be with Steve. “He took such good care of Steve.”

Bucky wants to go to see Steve too, but Missus Meyers takes him home.

Steve’s weak smile in the emergency room before he disappeared with all the doctors is the last Bucky sees of his best friend before the move. 

 

* * *

 

After the move, Bucky doesn’t see Steve at all.

 

* * *

 

Bucky never forgets Steve’s face, or how Missus Rogers had called him “brave.”

In the sands of a foreign desert, staring unblinking through a rifle’s scope, waiting to fire between one breath, one heartbeat, and the next, it’s those hazy memories that remind him that he’s human, when everyone around him believes he’s a robot after all.

 

* * *

tbc

 


	2. I'm Not A Human If My Engines Lock

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> James is many things to the US Army: an asset, a tool, and a prized soldier. And if that makes him a little cold around the edges, well that's just the way it is. Isn't it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note the raised rating. Warnings for some body horror and poorly behaved persons who say bad things that nobody should repeat. 
> 
> Phil & Clint & Natasha have an open relationship with Bucky. It is casual and friendly. It is also confined to this chapter. Obviously my S.H.I.E.L.D. OT3 is not canon compliant as of Avengers 2, which I am choosing to blithely ignore. 
> 
> The rest of the chapter notes at the end.

**Twenty Years Later**

“So, when are you coming home?”

Becca leans into the webcam, one eyebrow rising over narrowed blue eyes. At twenty-five, she’s long since mastered the art of intimidating her brother with little sister wiles. Fortunately for James, there’s an ocean and thousands of miles between him and her sphere of direct influence.

“Three months until I have leave, just like I told you last week, Becks. The Army may be a logistical nightmare, but that doesn’t mean they’re going to drop a free vacation into my lap just because I did good this week.”

“I just miss you. Brooklyn is getting too stupid for words without your dumb face around to keep the balance.”

“I feel so loved right now, I can hardly tell you. Really. I may cry. Big, manly tears. It’ll be a sight.” His tone is as dry as the desert outside and he’s got a perfectly blank delivery. God bless little sisters, because while his usual sense of humor goes over these days like a lead balloon, Becca laughs delightedly.

“Oh shuddup, you turd. You have put in for the flight home, right?”

“ _Yes_ , Rebecca…”

 

* * *

 

“You letting your sister push you around again, Barnes?”

The husk of that familiar voice sends a delicious shiver up James’ spine, but his smile is small and tight when he turns to face his favorite spec ops liaison. Somehow, it doesn’t surprise him in the least that Natasha knows his call schedule with his sister, let alone the nature of those calls. Becca’s just lucky they _get_ so many calls back and forth; a lot of guys would kill for a chance to get up before dawn for a thirty minute Skype session every week. James shouldn’t really even get that much, except that the powers-that-be know he’s only got the one stateside entanglement. Also, they know he’s being actively courted by S.H.I.E.L.D. with his renewal coming up the next year and the Army has _feelings_ about their people being stolen away by the land of alphabet soup. So, special privileges. He ain’t complaining.

“Spying on me, Romanoff?” he retorts. “Seems a bit beneath your pay grade.”

“I was looking for Clint, actually. He’s been missing Phil.”

James suppresses a wince. Phil Coulson and Natasha Romanoff are the ballast that keep S.H.I.E.L.D.’s premier sniper, Clint Barton, steady. And to play well with others for longer than a few weeks at a time, Barton needs both of them where he can see them, or he gets...twitchy.

It’s as unconventional a relationship as it is entirely understandable. Coulson discovered Barton when he was still a kid slumming around with a literal circus, which worked as a front for a cadre of con artists and thieves. By all accounts, Coulson had gone above and beyond with the acquisition and development of his newest asset, and had earned the young man’s unblinking loyalty in return. A few years after that, Barton had discovered and brought in Natasha — an incalculable boon to his home agency, which helped him skirt all manner of insubordination and sedition charges — on the provision that she partner with Barton under Coulson’s direct oversight. There had been salacious rumors all through the intelligence community about the nature of Coulson’s relationship with his assets, but when Coulson had taken a piece of shrapnel through the chest a few years back, the bloody swath of retribution rained down upon the mercenary group responsible silenced all speculation about whether Coulson’s assets could or would be lured away from him to serve another master.

Romanoff and Barton have been liaising to James’ base for the last four months, and for the past 20 some-odd days, Coulson’s been off somewhere redacted doing something even more redacted to persons most especially redacted. It was really only ever a matter of time before Barton started fraying around the edges. And when that happens, it’s always best to stand well outside of the blast radius.

“Bad?” James asks, concerned both for the integrity of his home away from home, and for his friend.

“Not yet. He’s just restless for now, and Phil knows better than to push it any longer than a month if he wants to avoid serious fallout. You ready to get some breakfast?”

“I could eat,” he offers with a shrugged shoulder.

Natasha doesn’t like eating in the mess alone. One too many incidences of her meal being interrupted by the need for sudden violence, she says. James has never seen that play out first hand, but it was a pattern long established by the time he’d met Strike Team Delta, and Natasha is without question a woman who attracts a lot of attention wherever she goes, so he doesn’t disbelieve.

(As a big brother through and through, it used to be hard for James to really wrap his head around the idea that there would be guys who just wouldn’t know how to act around women, especially women who _signed up for the military_. But Basic had rid him of most of that idealism, and the following eight years of service had cemented his latent cynicism on that score. It was why he didn’t keep his handful of pictures of Becca anywhere that didn’t have a lock.)

Natasha’s reputation precedes her by now, so even most of the worst offenders of James’ acquaintance know better than to make a play, and anyhow, Barton’s uncanny aim doesn’t limit itself to firing a rifle and he has a tendency to take people insulting Natasha even more personally than the woman herself.

(James had never seriously considered toothpicks a deadly weapon until he’d met Barton. To be fair, he’d also never thought anyone could _spit_ anything that quickly or with such pinpoint accuracy, but Barton’s mouth was nothing if not full of dubious surprises.)

James follows Natasha into the relatively empty DFAC, where most of the early diners are just trying to grab a quick, quiet bite between one thing and another. After spooning up the vague approximation of an American breakfast the mess serves each morning, Natasha juggles their two trays of food on her way to find them a place to sit, while James grabs each of them a cup of the infamous DFAC coffee, which manages to be both burnt and watered down at the same time. (And yet, there’s still always, _always_ a line for the swill.)

By the time James makes it to where Natasha has set his tray of food down across from her own at the glorified picnic bench of a table, Barton has appeared next to her from out of nowhere and is draped over the table, making grabby hands at the second cup James is carrying. Natasha smacks Barton’s hands down and takes her coffee with an appreciative nod. She then looks Barton straight in his pathetic hangdog face and deliberately takes a good, leisurely pull from the cup, her eyes narrowed in pleasure.

“Aw, coffee,” Barton murmurs sadly, before contenting himself with stealing some chow off of Natasha’s overloaded plate.

Once they’ve finally managed to convince Barton to go get his own plate, the DFAC starts to really fill in earnest. James is glad he’s got his back to a wall, for what it’s worth in a building that’s probably never met an engineer it didn’t make cry. How Natasha can stand having her back to the whole room, he’ll never know, but he’s long suspected she actually does have eyes in the back of her head. Or maybe that’s just a fancy way of saying she has Clint, which...he’s not exactly jealous of the _Clint_ part of that equation, but yeah, he’s man enough to admit he’s envious of having that steady, competent shadow always there watching the blind spots.  

But he’s used to being on his own enough to be able to shut that thought down before it really gets started. It’s part of why he joined the Army; so he could shake that feeling of needing someone at his six by being in a line of work where he’d be assured of never really being on his own. Of course, then he’d been picked out to be a sniper, and there went that idea. And anyway, he found that being a sniper meant not having to bunk down for months on end with jerks like Hodge, a corporal who’d recently been assigned to their camp and who was determined to make himself top dog of the grunts.

Hodge’d also decided to take a particular disliking to James, for reasons unknown. Clint said it was because James was a Brooklyn boy. Natasha said it was because Hodge was a philistine. Phil hadn't hazarded a guess, just politely asked to be informed when Hodge needed dealing with.

Clint’s almost finished shoveling down his breakfast while James and Natasha look on in fascinated horror, when Hodge raises his voice from the table directly behind Natasha. He’s obviously mid-thought, for all that “thought” applies to Hodge.

“...I mean, I had no idea the Army _paid_ for that kind of thing. If girls get to expense their dildos, the fuck can’t _I_ blow off a little steam and bill it back to Uncle Sam, right? Same itch to scratch, ‘n all.”

The table explodes into guffaws and snorting laughter. Natasha goes still — not stiff, never stiff — but her spine straightens ever so slightly out of an insouciant slouch into a very deliberate sort of relaxation. Clint’s fork is halfway to his mouth when he pauses, looking up to catch James’ eye. The eggs on his fork don’t so much as tremble, hanging in mid-air in Clint’s perfectly steady grip. James feels the beginnings of a tension headache threaten just behind his eyes.

“Fair’s fair, is all I’m saying,” Hodge continues, his head turned just so. “If we’re letting the girls get their dick on demand, then same should go for all of us. It’s _equality_ , yeah?”

The guy sitting to Hodge’s right sneers and makes no secret of flicking his gaze over his shoulder at James and Clint before looking back to the guys at his own table. Hodge, of course, is far from done, especially with such an enthusiastic audience.

“Just, man. I never heard of a dildo getting _leave_ before. I mean, I’ll pay a whore when she earns it, but food, a bunk, _and_ vacation time? Seems like a lot of money to be throwing around on something that runs on batteries.”

Clint’s getting ready to move, and Natasha’s hand, quick and silent as a cat, grasps his arm to hold him still. Her eyes are no less full of murder and mayhem than Barton’s, but Natasha’s anger burns cold. She’s a watcher, a long-game player. It’s part of why she fits so well with Clint; when Barton’s looking down the barrel of a rifle — or when he’s practicing his archery, a holdover from circus days — he’s patient as the day is long, but when it comes to facing things head on, Clint is much more prone to knee-jerk reactions. Natasha and Phil keep him out of trouble most of the time by sheer virtue of the fact that Barton trusts them to make the smarter call. Also, usually, the _meaner_ call. Say what you will about Clint’s tastes, but he appreciates a good comeuppance like most people appreciate a fine wine.

Clint subsides — just barely — to see how Natasha will lead in dealing with Hodge. Fortunately, James has been saving up a good dig for a while, ever since Phil mentioned it when he was last on base.

“What was that you were saying about good ol’ Cap, Nat? Y’know, the Boy Scout, apple-pie eating, All-American specimen you guys recruited a couple years back?”

Natasha, bless her, is absolutely never caught off guard by a non sequitur, and especially not by a reference to “Cap,” the mysterious, no-name, goody-two-shoes, overachieving field agent she’s been swearing for the last fifteen months that James would get on with like a house on fire and that Phil talks about in a breathless voice while Clint sits in the background and rolls his eyes.

“Oh, that’s right! I didn’t finish telling you about his old unit, the one he single-handedly pulled out of the frying pan in Kandahar when this specialist read their orders wrong and got them pinned down in an epic firefight. You’ll love this one. The specialist’s name escapes me at the moment…”

“Something that sounded like ‘duck,’” Barton pipes up helpfully. “Or was it ‘hide?’ ‘Dodge?’ Something like that.”

“That’s right,” Natasha murmurs, briefly stroking Clint’s arm with a couple fingers where she’s still got it pinned. “Anyway, it was about, oh, two years back, and this one specialist couldn’t read a map to save his goddamn life.”

“Or the lives of anybody around him,” Clint grumbles.

“And they’re supposed to be doing this operation where…”

“C’mon guys,” Hodge’s voice break in suddenly. “It’s getting real frosty over here in the server room. Besides, we’re not getting paid to sit around all day. Some of us gotta actually earn our keep, not just _liaise_ with the other spare parts.”

“Does anybody else hear that buzzing noise?” Clint asks James with feigned innocence.

“Only when you boys are hard at work between Romanoff’s legs,” Hodge sneers low enough that it only carries to the guys at his table and theirs. Clint jolts hard, trying to get up, but Natasha holds him down in his seat firmly.

“Bzzz, bzzz,” smirks one of Hodge’s buddies, meeting and holding James’ eyes for a second before the dispersing table explodes in raucous laughter, the bunch of them standing to saunter off out of the DFAC.

“Fucking limp-dicked assholes,” Clint mutters. Natasha’s still got a vice-like grip on his arm, holding on with an unspoken warning against causing trouble where anyone can see. There will be trouble later, of that James has absolutely no doubt, but it will be out of sight of anyone who could pin it on the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents.

Clint jabs his other hand, still holding his fork, in James’ direction. “You want ‘em to learn a little something about manners on the double quick, you let me know.”

James snorts. “Etiquette lessons from the boy who ran away to the circus. That I might _pay_ to watch.”

Clint grins, and Natasha rolls her eyes before releasing Clint’s arm. James can see the indentations where her short nails dug into the fabric of his sleeve. Barton had never so much as flinched.

“Really, it’s nothing new. You know that. If I can’t handle a couple of infantry boys being jealous in my general direction, then I’m gonna need to just pack it in for good. Hand in my badass card, and spend my twilight years shooing youths off my stoop with a broom.”

“Preeminent US Army sniper Winter, reduced to this withered husk of a man. The intelligence community is sorry for your loss,” Natasha murmurs over Clint’s delighted cackling. “But don’t worry; I’m sure we can have you rebuilt. Maybe even upgraded. Stark tech has some new stabilisers in their articulated joinery that might finally make Barton here obsolete, if installed in the right housing.”

Clint barks out an indignant, “ _hey!_ ” as James lets the teasing wash over him, soothing the prickly parts of his temper that Hodge had riled up.

Truly, James’ reputation as a Spec Ops sniper has always been colored by a perception that he ran somewhat cold-blooded, that he’s just a little too collected and calm in those adrenaline-fueled minutes and hours when the whole world seems to lose its mind.

And he can’t really deny that he likes being thought of as cool under pressure or hard to rattle. They’re optimal traits for a sniper to have; they make him not just good, but _excellent_ at his job. He tries to handle his successes with the same neutral regard as he weighs and studies his failures. He’s had his bad moments, sure — SERE is a cakewalk for absolutely no one, after all — but on the whole, James has always seen a benefit in cultivating a bit of distance and reserve.  

That that distance had also appeared between himself and the teams he works with — tides of men and women who cycle on and off unit deployments while James gets dropped in wherever the Army wants him on any given day — seems a regrettable side effect. Cool headedness had earned him his call sign, but it hasn’t made him many friends, except with a handful of those soldiers whose specialized skills made for more interesting assignments of their own. Mostly people like Clint and Natasha, those stuck in the land of alphabet soup and black ops.

But his sense of professionalism never means that he doesn’t care. If he could change just one thing about his life in the Army, it would be to kick the miserable SOB of a NCO who started the whole “robot” thing repeatedly in the balls. Because there is nothing useful or good about James being thought of as a machine — a machine that would leave men to rot if the shot was too risky or the odds of success too poor. His record actually reflects the exact opposite: “If Barnes has any kind of shot, no matter how inventive, he’ll take it to keep his team covered and out of harm’s way.” But some things are hard to shake after eight years, and he’d grown as familiar hearing “Tin Man” as “Winter” in reference to himself.

Some hills, in the long run, just aren’t worth dying on.

 

* * *

 

Barton murmurs softly, laying out what James needs for the shot. He adjusts, sights, pants roughly a few times to pull in extra oxygen, before emptying his lungs and settling.

 _Thump, thump_ , knocks his heart, steady and slowing.

_Thump, thump._

_Thump, thump._

_Thump, thump._

**Crack**. _Thump, thump._

He breathes in and checks the rifle, while Barton confirms what he sees through his scope.

“Good job, Barnes. Hell, almost as good as me.”

James tucks his chin in and rolls his head to look up at Barton stretched out beside him, grinning like the cocky bastard he is.

“Shut up, Hawkeye,” he smirks back.

Barton’s eyes drop briefly to James’ lips. “Make me, _Winter_.”

“Later, maybe. You’re lucky that your eyes are worth more than your mouth, otherwise you’d starve, Barton.” He turns back in to the scope.

Barton laughs. “So cold, buddy. It’s always work, work, work with you.”

“‘s what I’m out here sweating my balls off for, isn’t it?”

“Way I hear it,” Barton drawls as he turns back into position, “‘Barnes wasn’t built with the circuitry to sweat.’ 2 degrees south-west.”

James adjusts, sights, begins the process over again, but not before muttering, “Does not compute,” just low enough that only Barton can hear him.

Barton chuffs so hard it jostles him and James misses his target by a hair, and then Barton gives him shit for it all the way back from the range.

Later, in Romanoff’s quarters, James laces up his boots while Barton watches him, sloe-eyed, from the bunk.

“Work, work, work,” he mumbles into the back of Romanoff’s shoulder. “Like a machine.”

“Shut up, Clint,” James murmurs, as he shrugs back into his ACU shirt.

“Make me.”

James leans over the bunk, bracing with one hand while he tugs Clint’s head up with the other for a rough kiss. Clint hums, pleased, when James bites his lower lip before pulling away. Natasha growls, half-awake, and James kisses her shoulder once in apology. She stretches, appeased, before tugging Clint fully back down to tangle with her in the bunk.

With a last affectionate stroke over both their warm, lax bodies, James lets himself out of the lovers’ unofficially official shared quarters to pick his way back across base to his own assigned bunk so he can get a few hours in before his next shift.

 

* * *

 

In the morning, his world is blown — quite literally — to pieces.

 

* * *

 

Most of life as a soldier is boring, punctuated by brief stretches of pants-shitting terror. The men and women of the armed forces are used to switching from one to the other and then back again; it’s just the way life is in an active war zone. The Army trains its soldiers most of the way into a Pavlov’s reaction to certain sounds and sights and smells, and the shit hitting the fan gets them the rest of the way there. A month or two in, and most of it’s as natural as breathing anymore.

When the base alarm sounds, it shakes James out of sleep and into his boots before he’s even fully awake.

 

* * *

 

He’s signalling a move to Clint over the deafening chatter of machine gun bursts and booming explosions, that he’s going to shift himself to a better sight line further down the way from Barton's perch, when a mortar falls to earth between their positions on the wall. James’ glimpse of Clint's shocked expression is seared into the backs of his eyes in the blinding light of the flash, as the explosion tears a gaping hole in the ground below.

James is blown back and off his feet by the concussive force of the blast. He is just barely putting together that he is abruptly staring up into the sunny sky, when the wall beneath James gives way and he tumbles down into darkness and pain.

 

* * *

 

James surfaces briefly a few times before he really manages to swim into true consciousness. Some distant voice in the back of his head — its urgency muffled by the searing fire of pain throughout James’ body, but concentrated chiefly in his left arm — is emphatic that this is _not good_.

His ears are ringing painfully and his mouth is full of dust and gravel from landing face down. He shifts his head to one side and coughs harshly to try and clear his nose and mouth, and his chest protests adamantly, but his arm screams at him like liquid fire at the slight jostle. Instinctively, he tries to roll away from the pain, which is when he comes to realization that he is pinned in place by rubble.

Buried, really. Tiny shafts of weak, watery light pierce through hunks of concrete and rebar to illumine James’ resting place. He sees, when he can turn his head enough to look, that he would have been buried entirely, except for a transport truck, blown onto its side, which is holding up a large section of broken wall above his head. That makeshift ceiling is shattered enough in places that James can see it is holding up even more sections of wall and rocky debris, which shift to rain down dust and gravel onto his head through crudely bent rebar.

He can also see that he was not the only one near the truck when the mortar blew.

The little hollow space made by the truck and the ceiling-wall is crudely ten foot square, more or less so in places, with the empty bed of the truck adding another few feet through the gaping fabric of its cargo cover. James can see enough people parts under and around the slashed cargo cover, its spilling contents, and — towards the end of where the wall-ceiling provided its dubious shelter — the heavy mass of the 7-Ton’s cab, that he knows at least three people had to have been on the ground near the truck when the mortar fell.

(Probably four. There’s a spare hand nearby that doesn’t make sense otherwise. James scrapes his chin hard across the gravel of the earth beneath him so he can turn his face to look the other way from it.)

In a macabre send up to the Wizard of Oz, one pair of boots sticks out underneath the cab, an expanding pool of blood seeping into the sand nearby. James is transfixed by the sight, morbidly transfixed by that detail, while trying futilely to figure out if he can identify the soldier by the bottoms of his (or her?) boots. Anything to escape confronting the pain in his arm, the wetness he can feel against his electrified nerves and skin, and the very real panic that this is the waiting room he will occupy until Death gets around to him. He can’t hear anything telling about the firefight that is raging (is it still?) above and beyond this little slice of hell he’s fallen into. He tries to breathe around the dust in his teeth and nose, but he ends up sucking it in and then coughing it back out all the same. He ignores that there is coppery liquid wetting his lips when the fit passes, leaving him gasping.

“--Hello?” comes a shaky voice, toward the back of the truck’s toppled bed. James takes a few moments to catch his breath, before rolling his head back around to look that way.

“Some...one there?” he pants harshly.

There is some shuffling, and one of the larger of the dangling flaps of the cargo cover shifts aside a little, revealing a face covered in dirt, as well as a few trails and spatters of blood.

Underneath all of that, Corporal Hodge’s blanched face stares back at James across eight feet of godforsaken desert.

The thought occurs to James that he must’a pissed someone off in the great sparkly upstairs balcony of the universe pretty damn bad to be forced to die with _Hodge_ as witness. He doesn’t have the air or the energy for the wry chuckle he wants to make, but he thinks about it real hard.

“The fuck...you doing down here, corporal?” James manages to gasp out, with a little sass even, down underneath the breathiness and the way he has to grit his teeth halfway through to get anything else out at all.

“Sergeant,” Hodge replies, eyes wide and panicked, not a trace of his usual bluster. “Shit. Sergeant, you okay?”

“Fine as fucking daisies,” James growls, knowing even as he puts the words together that they don’t really make sense, but too exhausted to try for a better retort.

“Morgan’s dead, sir.” Hodge is spiralling into shock, his voice beginning to take on the tight squeal of hysteria. “Lopez won’t wake up. Sir. What do we do, sir?”

James has never heard himself sir-ed more in his life. He’s only a few pay grades above Hodge, and up to this point, he’d had every reason to believe Hodge was deliberately unaware of that fact. But Phil’s story about Hodge’s previous fuck up hadn’t been wrong on the topic of Hodge’s apparent tendency to panic under pressure, and right now James was the senior-most resident of their rubble-y clubhouse. Hodge was looking to him for orders — for _order_ , plain and simple. And James is pinned to the ground like a butterfly and can barely string a few words together at a time through the blinding pain.

 _Perfect_.

“Where’s Lopez?” James bites out, trying and only briefly succeeding at lifting his head before a lack of air and rubbery muscles force him to drop it again with a grunt.

Hodge disappears for a moment, then returns to the little gap in the cloth.

“I pulled him around from the other side of the truck.” The wall-ceiling must extend over part of the underside of the truck too, then. “He’s hurt bad. Helmet knocked off and his leg’s broke. There’s —” Hodge makes a choked sound. “There’s bone out, sir. And lotsa blood.”

“Pulse?”

“Yeah. Yeah, but he’s not waking up.”

“His eyes opening? He breathing?”

“A little. Yeah. Yeah.”

“Tourniquet ‘is leg.” Hodge dithers a moment, eyes wide and uncertain. “ — t’s a fucking _order_ , soldier!”

James dissolves into panting coughs, but Hodge disappears from view. Part of the cargo cover shudders, then he hears a ripping noise. Several moments after that, a tortured groan rises from the truck, dissolving into wordless whimpers and moans. James just concentrates on breathing.

When it goes more quiet, James feels exhaustion creeping around the back of his mind, trying to suck him under. He doesn’t realize he’s shut his eyes until Hodge’s voice returns.

“Sergeant? He’s waking up, Sergeant.”

“Good. Good. That’s...good,” James manages, his tongue slurring around the edges of the words.

“Sergeant?”

“Keep ‘im awake, cor’pral. Awake.”

“What about you, Sarge? There’s blood…”

“Know there’s blood!” James barks. “Can’t move, ‘n you shouldn’t. Whole f’cking thing could come down any minute. Truck’s the bes’ place.”

“But, Sarge —”

“Keep yer man awake, Hodge. Barton saw us go down; they’ll know to fin’ us here.”

That is, of course, if Barton’s in any shape to be telling anybody what happened, but Hodge needs the reassurance that help is coming and he’s in the best shape by far to wait it out until that help comes.

“I’ll keep Lopez awake, Sarge. And you gotta stay awake, too. Don’t go powering down on me, Barnes.”

Hodge tries to make it a joke, and James huffs in response. Hodge's returned grin is small and weak.

Hodge talks. He gets panicky when Lopez or James don’t respond, and James finds himself struggling to open his eyes between grunts of acknowledgement. He loses track of Hodge’s narrative about women, football, and drunken exploits in Germany several times, and he knows he’s slipping.

The air feels like it’s getting thinner, or is it thicker? Harder to swallow, anyway. The shards of light shift focus by a few feet and the bodies begin to smell. The spare hand spasms once, and James manages a good solid chunk of lucid time focusing on watching it for further movement. Hodge’s voice goes hoarse, and he sounds further and further away each time he calls for James to check in.

Eventually, the exhaustion swallows him under.

 

* * *

 

There’s noise all around, piercing their little muted chamber of rubble and twisted steel. There are grating scrapes of rock on rock. Distant squeals of machinery. Muffled voices. Hodge’s panicky rasp, calling for him.

“Barnes? Hey, Barnes? Wake up, Sarge. Cavalry’s here. C’mon, Sarge. Wake up.”

James thinks about opening his mouth, thinks about moving the squint of his gaze over and up, to where Hodge is calling him from. But all he can see is a hand that doesn’t go with anything, and there’s no energy in him for much else.

A voice calls down from somewhere high above James' head and Hodge yells back, voice cracking from overuse.

“Three, sir! Two severely wounded, one of them pinned.”

The disembodied voice yells something back at Hodge.

“Sir, you gotta hurry. Lopez is still conscious —” is he? Good for Lopez. Well done, Lopez. “ — but Barnes isn’t responding, sir!”

James puzzles over the abandoned hand a few feet away. What is it doing over there? Where did it come from? Is it _his_ hand? No. Wrong color. He thinks. Maybe it isn’t. He tries to look down at the tip of his nose to check, but the pain of trying to do so brings back his awareness of the rest of the pain that had been buzzing angrily in the background, and he squeezes his eyes closed with a groan.

“He’s awake!” Hodge yells. “Hurry!”

A puff of air, cooler and less awful than he remembers air being, kicks up dust nearby and brushes his face. James opens his eyes and watches the way the dust swirls in the light.

There are boots in the dust. Two of them. Then knees. Then hands. Then a face, looking at him from just a few feet away. Dark face, like the hand. But not like the hand, because it has its own hands.

“Sergeant Barnes?” asks the face. “My name is Sam Wilson. Can you hear me?”

James blinks at him.

The face moves away, up and over. When James tries to track it, his chin comes back down to earth with a rough smack and his shoulder radiates pain that tears down his left side. He pants roughly into the dirt, a sound spilling out of his mouth that he doesn’t recognize as his own.

“He’s out of it,” the Sam-face says somewhere overhead. “Shock, blood loss, concussion. Take your pick. We gotta get him outta this hole right the hell now.”

More boots. More air. More light. More noise. More faces. More wetness. Or maybe the same amount. He’s not sure.

Pain, though. _So much pain_ , he feels like pain may be all that he is anymore. All that he ever was. He cannot move, cannot make sounds or breathe or think or see past the edges of all this pain, which seems to make up every last part of what he can sense.

“Tough guy, huh?” the Sam-face says. “Fucking tough guys. You gotta let me know when we're hurting more than helping, okay?”

A lot more things hurt. James can't tell whether they're the hurt or the help, so he doesn't try to make any more sense of the pain's ebbs and flows. He swallows more screams down his dry throat, but not all of it. He hears Sam-face swear up a short storm of words, but he can't identify why specifically.

Everything hurts. Everything is incandescent pain. He rides it as best as he can, and waits for it to finally stop. He's strangely sure that soon, it _will_ stop.

Sam-face tells him, " _No_. Not on _my_ watch, soldier boy."

Then James is moving. Up, then down, then swiftly up again, on a piece of board they strap him down to tightly. Pain rides along with him, but also not-pain. It is both like summertime by the sea, cresting up and down on waves of motion, and like no terror he has ever known, to be in so much pain.

“Hang in there, tough guy. Just a little more.”

Up, up, up, and no control. Seasick and airsick and sick to his stomach and shit-scared and _so much pain_. And light. Light everywhere. Heat and light and faces and voices. End over end on the stiff board they've stretched him out on and there’s the sky again, suddenly. No more rock-ceiling. No more dust. Just sky and sun and the ever-present pain.

Hodge is somewhere out of sight saying, “Oh, god. Oh, thank god.” And that seems strange, but James lets it slide by because Hodge is so much less real than everything else happening.

Another face, close to his own as he is carried quickly away, towards a truck — _the_ truck? when did they get it up on its feet? the plus sign on the side is new too...it's a Phil-face. Looking down at him with a little line between his eyebrows.

“Barnes? Barnes, you’re going to be all right. Just stay awake. Can you hear me?”

James can see Phil-face’s lips move and words batter against his ears, but he’s not sure they all fit together.

Another face. Big-face. Blond. Sky-eyes and worried. James likes that face. Hello, face. Don’t be sad.

“Bucky?” the big-face asks.

“...’o ‘the hell...you callin’...Bucky?” he rasps back, hardly aware of the words in the effort to stay focused on what’s going on around him and move his mouth at the same time.

Nobody answers his question, but that’s probably because James blacks out as soon as he’s finished asking it.

* * *

**tbc**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There were three ways I worked on that the continuation of this story could have gone, and it took me a while to decide which way I wanted to take it in the end. Apologies for a cliffhanger of sorts, but I needed a clean split between Bucky's injury and his recovery for my own sake. The final part is mostly happy, I promise.
> 
> I do have friends and relatives who are vets, a few who were even...more than infantry, let's say. But I did not consult them on specifics for this fic. I also forever and always seem to be without a beta. Therefore! All inaccuracies are my own damn fault and I apologize if they are jarring for anyone who served. Please feel free to report those, or any other goofs, gaffs, or groan-worthy errors to the front desk. 
> 
> Musical inspiration for this chapter -- Daft Punk: Within, and Arnalds: For Now I Am Winter - Nils Frahm Rework


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